Clement of Alexandria: INSTRUCTOR (PAEDAGOGUS) - Part II, Complete

Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.

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Page 8

For He by His own passion rescued us from offences, and sins, and such like thorns; and having destroyed the devil, deservedly said in triumph, "O Death, where is thy sting?" [1472] And we eat grapes from thorns, and figs from thistles; while those to whom He stretched forth His hands--the disobedient and unfruitful people--He lacerates into wounds. I can also show you another mystic meaning in it. [1473] For when the Almighty Lord of the universe began to legislate by the Word, and wished His power to be manifested to Moses, a godlike vision of light that had assumed a shape was shown him in the burning bush (the bush is a thorny plant); but when the Word ended the giving of the law and His stay with men, the Lord was again mystically crowned with thorn. On His departure from this world to the place whence He came, He repeated the beginning of His old descent, in order that the Word beheld at first in the bush, and afterwards taken up crowned by the thorn, might show the whole to be the work of one power, He Himself being one, the Son of the Father, who is truly one, the beginning and the end of time.

But I have made a digression from the paedagogic style of speech, and introduced the didactic. [1474] I return accordingly to my subject.

[1472] 1 Cor. xv. 55.

[1473] [The beauty of this mysticism need not be pointed out, but it need not be pressed as exposition.]

[1474] [This illustrates, in part, the difference between the esoteric, or mystic, and the more popular teaching of our author.]

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